SOTU

What'd you htink of the president's speech? He was clearly subdued, but not fatigued, as he appeared in his recent televised Iraq address. What a long, long way he's come from his first SOTU, in 2002, with 84 percent approval in the post-9/11 era of national unity. I went back to read his SOTU from last year, and the language was still remarkably idealistic, soaring even, about America's place in the world. Three weeks later came the Golden Mosque bombing, which finally set off Iraq's civil war.

There was little of that uplifting oratory tonight. Nor should there have been. But look, how on earth can the president still say things like this with a straight face? Look:

In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah – a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.

The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat. But whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent, they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans ... kill democracy in the Middle East ... and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale.

The Shia extremists are part and parcel of the government in Baghdad that we support. That our soldiers are fighting to defend. Here's more dangerous nonsense from the president:

Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies – and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance. So we advance our own security interests by helping moderates, reformers, and brave voices for democracy.

Well, that "most" gives him an out to explain why the Palestinians used their free vote to choose Hamas to lead them, I guess. But look at Iraq: only 2 percent of Iraqis used their ballots to vote for the liberal secular parties. All the rest voted their sectarian interests. Now we have sectarian civil war in Iraq. I know the president didn't intend for things to turn out that way, but they did, and I do wish he'd clam up about this stuff. It's just not true. Where is the evidence that free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies? Were the Germans who voted for the Nazi Party not free? Were the Southerners who voted for pro-slavery candidates in antebellum America unfree? Democracy gives people the opportunity to vote what's in their hearts and minds -- good, evil or otherwise. The idea that giving people democracy means giving them the chance to unleash their inner Rotarian is bosh, as Iraq proves.

Anyway, the speech was better than I expected, but I think it was almost completely irrelevant to what's actually going to happen in Washington over the next year. It's all Iraq, and for better or for worse, the Dems are in control.